by Rysa Walker
She stands stock-still, arms rigid at her side. Unable to move. Unable to breathe.
Then the spell breaks, ending as suddenly as it began. She’s once again on the sidewalk. She breathes deeply, slowly, until her pulse returns to a normal pace.
Everything is fine. It’s a bright, glorious morning in Haddonwood. Autumn, her favorite time of year. Her father will be back in a few days. Dani is on her way to class, perfectly safe, although Daisy’s less certain of the safety of any pedestrians who might be between here and the high school.
And it’s Halloween. She’s been looking forward to this day for weeks. Tucker will be coming to the FrightFest. And if she’s really lucky, maybe he’ll stop by and help her decide on a few more clips to add to the scream reel.
It’s going to be a good day.
Her mother is still gone of course. Nothing can change that.
But life goes on.
Six
RAUM
Zophiel had been in Haddonwood. Raum could feel her. Snooping. Prying. Poking around in the bushes. Rummaging through his closets, so to speak. Looking for chinks in his armor. Glitches. Gaffes. Any excuse to tighten the old thumbscrews. She’d probably flown in before daybreak to make her rounds, planning to slip away while he was still resting.
It isn’t the first time she’s come sniffing about, of course, and he doubts it will be the last. But in the past, Raum never had any problems keeping things in equilibrium after her little surveillance trips.
Today feels different. Everything is just a bit off now, like she crapped in his waterways and left behind a nasty case of mental typhoid. Nothing he can’t handle, but it’s annoying. Discourteous. Rude.
And yes, he knows she means well. They always do. He’s read a lot of history in his time. Observed a fair bit, too, albeit through a glass darkly, as they say. All the busybodies of the world, all those who would curtail your freedom, your autonomy—they always mean well, don’t they? When Maggie Yarrow was a girl, her mother called those arbiters of morality and the greater good Mrs. Grundys. The Mrs. Grundys come in many stripes, but the one commonality is that they all have some grand cause, some noble purpose. They always believe they have the answers. They always believe they are on the side of the angels. Or rather, on the side of the better angels. Because there are angels of many stripes, too.
And there, of course, is the very crux of the matter. How do you define better? Better for whom? Because better for some is easy. Better for most is tough. Better for all…is that even possible?
What baffles him most is how the busybodies can be so damned certain that their way is the right way, the virtuous way, the One and Only True Way. No shades of gray at all. No complexity. Right and wrong, good and bad, clearly demarcated by two solid yellow lines running straight down the middle of the road.
But she’s gone. Or at least, he’s fairly certain she is. And even though she left him with a bit of a mess to clean up, clean it up he will, because clean it up he must.
She can fly away.
He fucking lives here.
CHAPTER THREE
One
DAISY
Daisy waits a moment and then knocks again. Ninety-three-year-old bodies can take a while to get to the door.
The bell is clearly broken. She couldn’t hear even the slightest sound when she pushed it. Apparently, neither could the big orange cat snoozing in the wicker rocking chair on the far side of the porch. It didn’t even flick its tail in annoyance when Daisy knocked.
She pounds on the door a third time, a bit harder now, beginning to worry both about the possibly comatose cat and Miss Martha. While it’s true that ninety-three-year-old bodies often move slowly, it’s also true that they frequently stop working in the middle of the night.
But then the doorknob turns. Martha Yarn gives her a radiant smile that lights up her pale-blue eyes and sets in motion the fine lattice of wrinkles on her cheeks.
“Daisy Gray. Come in, come in.”
Daisy wipes her feet on the welcome mat and steps inside. The house smells like gingerbread. She stifles a laugh, remembering Dani’s comment about leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.
It’s been a while since she smelled anything this good. Her father cooks, but the only baking that has occurred in the Gray house since her mother died is the occasional batch of chocolate chip cookies, and usually half the dough gets eaten before the cookies ever hit the oven. By Dani, mostly, when she’s on one of her sporadic binges.
Martha laughs when she sees Daisy sniffing the air. “Let’s have our chat in the kitchen, shall we? I baked your favorite ginger cookies, and there’s a fresh pot of coffee. I figured you could probably use a second cup with that math test coming up later.”
“That would be…great,” Daisy says, wondering how Martha knew about the math test. She’s pretty sure she didn’t mention it when she called to ask about doing the interview. In fact, she wouldn’t even have known about it herself, since the test was originally scheduled for last week. The class had gotten a short reprieve because the teacher was out with the flu.
For that matter, how did Miss Martha know that this would be Daisy’s second cup of coffee? Or that ginger cookies were her absolute favorites?
Leave a trail of breadcrumbs…
Daisy takes a seat at the table. An aluminum pie tin of cookies sits in the center of the table, on top of a large Ziploc bag. The kitchen is decorated in muted shades of green and yellow, from the olive-green wall-mounted phone, complete with coiled cord, to the yellow Formica countertops. The only splash of vivid color in the room is the collection of alphabet and number magnets on the lower half of the fridge. Even these are faded, and Daisy wonders how many years it’s been since they were moved. Most of the letters are scattered randomly, but near the middle, five magnets are clustered together to form a single word: BAKER.
That seems a little ominous after Dani’s joke. But it only takes one bite of the ginger cookie for Daisy to decide the word is simply Martha’s well-earned badge of honor. There are far worse ways to go than being fattened up with these cookies and baked into a pie.
“You’re right on time,” Martha says as she pours the coffee. “I’m not surprised in the slightest, of course. Your grandmother, Elizabeth, God rest her soul, was never late when I taught her. Not even once.”
“You taught my grandmother?” The question is more idle curiosity than anything else. Daisy has seen pictures of her grandparents, and even heard a few stories. But all four of them died before she and Dani were born, so she doesn’t have any real emotional attachment to their memory.
“I most certainly did,” Martha says. “Class of 1963. Her face has been gone for a while, though. And I taught both of your parents, of course, in 1984 and 1986. When we’re done here, you can see them on my Wall of Fame, if you’d like.”
Daisy nods, although several things in that sentence make no sense to her at all. But she guesses you’re entitled to a few oddball comments when you’re ninety-three.
“Oh, I can’t believe I forgot!” Daisy says. “Happy birthday.”
“Why thank you, dear.” Martha puts two cups of coffee on the table. Not mugs like the ones at Daisy’s house, but china cups with dainty handles that don’t look dishwasher safe. “It’s a bittersweet day, really,” the woman continues, “since it will be my last, but…most people don’t get ninety-three birthdays, so you won’t catch me complaining. Although now I really do wonder how many of them were real…”
The revelation about Miss Martha’s health takes Daisy by surprise. “I didn’t know you were ill.”
“Oh, I’m not! That’s another thing to be thankful for, isn’t it? I’m a bit creaky in the joints when I get up in the mornings, but otherwise, I’m fit as a fiddle. And my arthritis is so much better now. I can even crochet again.” She holds her hands up for Daisy to inspect. “Now what did you want to ask for this paper of yours?”
Daisy is now more confused than ever, but she pulls her notebook a
nd a pen from her backpack. She’s put a good deal of work into these questions, which range from what life was like when Martha was a girl to her experiences teaching during the years where children practiced ducking under their desks to protect themselves from the prospect of nuclear annihilation. But as they talk, Daisy grows increasingly worried that Martha Yarn might have had a stroke recently.
“You know, I’m really not sure about that,” Martha says when Daisy asks where she went to college. “I’m beginning to think that part of my life wasn’t given very much thought. I do think I went to college—and really, I must have in order to have gotten my teaching position, right?”
“So…you don’t remember what college you attended?”
“It was a state school, and I was a B student,” Martha says immediately. But she doesn’t offer a name and can’t even dredge up a college mascot when Daisy asks, so she moves on to the next question.
The most interesting part of the interview for Daisy is when Martha talks about how much Haddonwood’s downtown area has changed over the years, especially when she begins reminiscing about the Hart. “I was so sad they closed down. When I was younger, we’d go almost every week. But then your cable and your Netflixes came along, and I guess that’s good, because old ladies like me find it a lot easier to watch movies at home. It’s just not the same, though. When you watched at the theater, everything seemed so much richer because it was shared. You could feel everyone else’s emotions…the way everyone sniffled when that boy had to kill Old Yeller, and the way everyone jumped when the knife came through the shower curtain.”
“I know!” Daisy says. “That’s exactly what I said to my sister a few months ago. Did you really see Psycho at the Hart?”
Martha smiles. “I saw everything there.”
“You know it’s reopening, right? The renovation is almost complete. We’re doing a FrightFest tonight as sort of a sneak preview. It starts at eight. You should come!”
“Oh, I wish I could, sweetie. I’d love to see the place again. But I’m afraid that will be too late for me.”
Daisy hadn’t considered the fact that bedtime probably comes early when you’re ninety-three. So she nods sympathetically and scans back through her list of questions to see if she missed anything.
“I guess that’s it,” she says. “Thank you for making the time to talk with me.”
“Oh, no! Thank you. I’ve enjoyed our little chat. And these are for you to take home.” Martha slips the pie plate into the plastic bag.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I have another batch all ready to pop into the oven before my other guests arrive this afternoon. You should finish off your coffee, though. We need to have you out that door by 8:47 if you’re going to catch your ride.”
Daisy frowns. “I’m not expecting a ride. It’s such a nice day that I was going to walk back.”
“Not if we have you out the door by 8:47.” A mischievous twinkle lights up Martha’s blue eyes for a moment but quickly fades as she leans in toward Daisy. “None of us have as much time left as we might think, Daisy Gray. I know a lot more about our Maker than I used to, and I’ll just say that you have to find happiness where you can in this world. If you love that young man, don’t let your chance slip away.”
Martha emphasizes this last point by squeezing Daisy’s arm. She leaves her hand there for a moment, and her eyes grow wide. Then she tucks her hands back into her lap. “Oh my. That…wasn’t in my visions at all. Are you the only one?”
“The only one what?”
The old woman gives Daisy a look like that’s a silly question.
“Do you see the boy, too? With the noose?” She smiles sadly at Daisy’s look of alarm. “Oh, I guess not, then. Never mind. But come…let me show you those photographs I mentioned on your way out.”
Daisy shoves her notebook back into her bag and gets up to follow Martha. The magnets on the fridge catch her eye again as she turns to go. After a moment, she realizes why. Some of the letters have moved. The B in BAKER is now on the floor. In its place is the letter M, changing the word to MAKER.
The only logical conclusion is that she read it wrong the first time. Maybe she saw the B on the floor and her mind just changed the words around. Martha is the only other person in the house, and she hasn’t been anywhere near the fridge.
It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
And yet the explanation feels wrong. She stares at the fridge, mentally daring the letters to move.
Which is stupid, but the creepy letters on the fridge thing is a pretty standard paranormal trope. Bag of Bones, Dead Like Me, and she’s pretty sure there were a few others, too. If you’re watching a scary movie and there are magnets on the fridge, it’s a safe bet that at some point, they’re going to start moving.
“Daisy?” Martha calls out from the other room. “Are you coming, dear?”
She gives the magnets another wary glance, then follows Martha into the bedroom. The old woman positively beams as she surveys row after row of brightly colored frames that occupy the upper half of the room’s walls. Those frames make Daisy uneasy for a moment, and she’s not sure why until she remembers the colored alphabet magnets.
Damn it, she thinks, the word was BAKER.
“I keep these pictures in here so I can see their smiling faces each morning when I wake up. Of course, most of the faces aren’t actually there anymore, but I remember them well enough. Let me see…1963.” She scans down one row and then taps the glass inside one of the frames. “Here we go. Your grandmother is right there, near the end of the second row. The girl with the blonde braids.”
For a moment, Daisy can’t breathe. She can’t pick out any features, any faces, aside from those of the woman, a much younger version of Miss Martha, who is standing behind a sign:
Mrs. Yarn’s Fifth Grade
1963–64
Haddonwood Elementary
All of the children look like they are wrapped from head to toe in a tight rubber sheet. Like mummies. Two dozen or so faceless, formless masses arranged in three rows. But then their features begin to emerge, a few children at a time. First her grandmother comes into focus, and then the children around her. It only takes about three seconds, but the wait seems interminable. And even after the faces are visible, the figures seem to flicker.
“I know,” Miss Martha says with a sympathetic smile. “The pictures never used to be like this. It’s a sign we’re near the end, maybe. Although, I really don’t think this happened the other times. This feels…new. Anyway, your parents are right over here.” She taps two photos for the fifth-grade classes of 1984 and 1986.
This time, a few faces are visible from the very beginning. Her dad. MB’s dad. A younger Eddie Furlong, her biology teacher. But she’s seen all of them recently, and in the case of her dad and MB’s father, she’s seen pictures of them as kids. There’s a framed photograph of MB and her dad in the hallway of their house, because he thinks they looked so much alike as little kids, although Daisy honestly doesn’t think the resemblance is all that striking.
Daisy moves on to the picture with her mom. It takes a fraction of a second longer, and then the image is fully…developed? That’s the only word that Daisy can think of to describe the effect. It’s like those old Polaroid pictures she’s seen in movies.
And just like the older photograph, the one with her grandmother, these seem to flicker in and out. It’s kind of like when her computer monitor had a wonky cable. The whole thing makes her head hurt.
“I…I need to go,” she says.
“Oh my, you’re right. Would you look at the time?”
Daisy hurries back into the kitchen to grab her things, determined to ignore the letters on the refrigerator. But of course she can’t resist.
The letters don’t say MAKER anymore.
They’ve rearranged into a new pattern. Most are positioned around the edges of the fridge now, but the cluster in the center reads OLD TIME R0CK AN. As she watc
hes, most of the letters crash to the floor. Only four remain, and they move to the center to form the word RAUM.
She takes a step back and bumps into Martha, who is standing directly behind her. “Now what on earth does that even mean?” the old woman asks in a petulant voice. “RAUM. That’s not a word. Unless it’s one of those texting words you kids use, like LOL.”
Daisy shakes her head. “No, ma’am. You saw them, though, right? You saw the letters move?”
“Well, of course I did. I’m old, but I’m not blind. Would you be a dear and pick up those infernal letters before you go, so that I don’t slip on them? That would sure mess up my plans for the day. Don’t worry about putting them back on the fridge, though. I won’t be needing them anymore, so just dump them in the trash. Unless you want them?”
“No, thank you.”
What Daisy really wants to do is get the hell out of this house. She would sooner grab an angry rattlesnake than touch those letters. But Jenny Gray’s ghost would definitely haunt her—or at the very least, haunt her conscience—if she made a ninety-three-year-old woman clean up this mess by herself. “Do you have a broom and dustpan?”
When she’s finished scooping the letters up, she dumps them into the trash, half expecting the damn things to jump back out. But they just lie there, inanimate, among the coffee grounds and other debris.
Martha hands her the plate of cookies and walks her to the front door. “You be careful, okay, Daisy? And don’t forget what I told you.”
Daisy isn’t sure exactly what she means, since the old woman told her a lot of things over the past forty-five minutes, some of which didn’t make much sense. But she doesn’t ask for clarification. There’s so much adrenaline coursing through her system that she can barely keep from shoving through the door and barreling down the sidewalk at full speed.
